Sonya is making great strides in her fight against gravity. It really seems she is just a couple of weeks from her first steps. Notably, she is pulling up more frequently throughout every day. More and more she is pulling one hand away from whatever she is grasping. So, in the short term, she is upping her game and scoring more points versus gravity.

In this game against gravity, Alon is determined to not be shown up by his baby sister. Walls, playgrounds, mountains. No matter the palette, Alon is letting gravity know he is here and a force to be reckoned with (at least for a while).

Sonya had a bit of a rough start to her life as a preschooler-beginnings are always hard, but the fresh start was compounded by a bad cold that made her pretty miserable the second half of the week. However, her teachers report that Sonya is adjusting well. She is unfortunately too small for some of the toys even in the toddler room where she spends her day, so her teachers created a personal, portable “sand table” for her (a plastic box with some sand and toys in it)—just the thing for a girl who loves to dig. She has participated in painting and drawing activities (even though she is too small to comfortably sit at the table with the bigger kids for some things), and is freely roaming the playground.

She’s also upright more and more- today when I went upstairs to get her in the morning, she was standing up in her crib: a first! Not surprising, though, considering she spent the whole weekend practicing getting up and sitting down.

No pictures to confirm any of this- you’ll just have to take my word for it. But here she is brushing with her banana toothbrush:

It was a lovely scene coming home this evening. The later rays of the Sun were being split by the late summer canopies of the oaks and Karen, Alon, and Sonya were catching pieces of the remains of today’s solar energy.

Alon discovered the backyard only in the last week. But how did the family get back there? Amazingly, the migration was led by the last sprout herself, Sonya.

Karen explained that they were playing in the front yard waiting for me to come home when Sonya started crawling up the driveway. Karen’s car was on the street, so it was a clear passage.

But, no, she didn’t stop there. She crawled into the back patio area and then continued up the slate walkway that parts the stone wall that splits our back yard.

Like the pigs that hunt truffles, her nose was telling her there was gold in the forest of our home. Gold to Sonya is yards and yards of soil.

She was in hog heaven.

Alon was paving the animal holes with his steamroller. He has two steamrollers – his scooter and his balance bike. He was riding his ScooterRoller down the hill and over the roots of the beech tree. He’s becoming adventurous on his moving machines. He’s starting to master his BalanceRoller.